Fighting Alzheimer's

Some of the most watched TV programs each year are NFL games and such large audiences give the NFL a tremendous opportunity to use its broadcasts for public service. To their credit, since 2009 the NFL has used October broadcasts to support breast cancer awareness and help raise money for research. Football players show their support by wearing pink on their uniforms and using pink equipment. Having lost my mother to cancer, and with relatives currently dealing with cancer, I applaud this NFL leadership role and enjoy seeing lots of pink on my TV screen this month.

When my mother, as yet undiagnosed with Alzheimer’s, asked me to get a pair of glasses from her purse, I stumbled upon a traffic ticket. I sighed, knowing my mother’s propensity for speeding. I scanned the summons to find how fast she was going this time. Much to my surprise she had been pulled over for going ten miles-per-hour on the middle lane of The George Washington Bridge. Rather than cutting off traffic, she had been virtually leading a parade of cars at a snail’s pace. Horns were blaring, but my mom thought there was a party going to a wedding reception.

When my husband George and I launched the USAgainstAlzheimer’s Network last year, our lofty vision was to unite the power of US - researchers, millions of families and advocates, hundreds of companies and our public officials.

We believed (and still do) that together, we will spur the innovations in science, industry practice and regulatory processes essential to the discovery of safe and effective therapies needed to stop Alzheimer's.

Good news for football moms…and football dads…and football grandparents…and anyone who watches football…and, well, anyone who cares about human life and scientific research. (There must be a category you fit into.)

Earlier this month, George Vradenburg participated in his first meeting of the national Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care and Services, which is charged with developing the first-ever national plan to combat Alzheimer’s. Using some connections (namely, that he’s my husband), I was able to secure an exclusive interview with Mr. Vradenburg, and we discussed how Alzheimer’s has affected him personally and the work he’s done to stop the disease.

TV: Thank you for meeting with me to discuss your work to end Alzheimer’s by 2020, Mr. Vradenburg.

When Pat Robertson answered a caller's question on his radio show stating that divorce is a reasonable option for Alzheimer's patients' spouses if they're going to do something in a new relationship, he opened up a hornets' nest of reactions. And many of those hornets had their proverbial stingers out.

Two weeks ago, I was sitting here combing through the newspapers and I was ecstatic that the lockout is over: the football season, not the government. The players and owners can get together. Maybe they should coach the government on negotiating and coming together. Oh, wait, they already offered to do that.

I have been to some Congressional hearings and might I sum most of them up right now: yawn.

Except for the hearing two weeks ago on Alzheimer’s. So maybe you have to be interested – okay, passionately involved – in the subject for a hearing to be interesting. You say Alzheimer’s and I’m there.

"Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed."